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Apple releases 8GB iPhone 5c

The iPhone 5c now comes in a lower-capacity 8GB model in Australia, China, the UK, France and Germany.

Lexy Savvides Principal Video Producer
Lexy is an on-air presenter and award-winning producer who covers consumer tech, including the latest smartphones, wearables and emerging trends like assistive robotics. She's won two Gold Telly Awards for her video series Beta Test. Prior to her career at CNET, she was a magazine editor, radio announcer and DJ. Lexy is based in San Francisco.
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Lexy Savvides

If you were looking for a slightly cheaper entry point into the world of iPhone, Apple has just made the iPhone 5c available in an 8GB variant.

The 5c in a variety of colours. (Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

The handset remains identical to the regular iPhone 5c that was released last year, but comes with less storage than the 16 and 32GB versions. The 8GB model is available to buy now through the Apple Store in Australia for AU$679.

Apple has not made the lower-capacity handset available to all markets, with Australia joining the UK, France, Germany and China in receiving the 8GB iPhone 5c.

The release of the 8GB model makes it the cheapest Apple handset with 4G LTE, but it is not the best value proposition compared to the other versions. For only AU$60 more you can buy the 16GB version which doubles internal flash storage. Considering that an iOS update can require around 3GB of storage for the installation process (it drops once the install is complete) 8GB of storage could be eaten up very quickly.

Apple continues to sell the unlocked 8GB variant of the iPhone 4s directly from its store at AU$529.

As well as the 8GB iPhone 5c, Apple has also reintroduced the Retina display iPad 4 to its tablet range. The iPad 2 has been discontinued and superseded by the Retina iPad as the cheapest model in Apple's tablet range. Pricing starts from AU$449 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model.